Tim Bailey is the longest full-time tenured employee to ever work for Johnson Engineering. He is also the only employee to have worked for all five of the company’s presidents. More than 40 years of dedicated service, working for the same company, is an amazing accomplishment.

Tim’s story here began in 1965 and 1966, during his high school summer breaks, when he began working part-time for our company founder, Carl E. Johnson. In 1972, Carl’s son Leif hired Tim full-time, after he returned from his tour in Vietnam where he served as an aircraft maintenance technician in the United States Air Force.

Although he started with surveying, he was pretty much a jack-of-all-trades, going wherever the projects needed him. He provided surveys, construction inspections, and even plan sets.

The company’s second president, Archie Grant, took Tim under his wing and taught him everything he knew about stormwater management and groundwater, mostly working with surface water discharge and watershed mapping. As a stormwater technician, before a project could be built, Tim was sent out to measure the water table at the project location, observe surface water discharge, and install water measurement equipment.

Tim takes with him invaluable knowledge and experience of a simpler time, before technology made things easier. He is one of the last few who possess the lost art of being able to perform his work without modern tools used to auto calculate results. He will be missed. We are honored by his dedication and humbled by his perseverance.